In general, conventional in-band signaling protocols for Home Phoneline Network Association (HPNA) provide Quality of Service (QoS) support through layer 3, such as IETF Diffserv, or layer 2, such as IEEE 802.1P/Q, tagging mechanisms. Tagging, which does not reserve network resources in advance, is accomplished through standardized combination of certain bit patterns in a data packet or frame for identifying the QoS specifications, such as flow type and priority level of the data traffic.
Regarding out-of-band QoS signaling protocols for an HPNA network, conventional out-of-band QoS signaling protocols, such as RSVP, send a QoS message to the network before sending traffic. The network then makes an admission decision based on network resources and, thus, generally provides better QoS service than the in-band signaling model.
Nevertheless, what is needed is a technique for providing end-to-end QoS for an HPNA network that integrates the lower layers of the HPNA network, i.e., the Logical Link Control (LLC) and Media Access Control (MAC) sublayers, with the higher layers.